New charges filed in death of baby boy
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BENTON COUNTY, Tenn. — New charges are filed in the 2014 death of a baby boy in Benton County. The mother’s boyfriend is already serving time for the murder. Now the mother also faces charges as prosecutors say she should never have left 7-month-old Joseph Hilliard alone with someone so violent. “He should have never been in a position where he could kill that baby,” said District Attorney General Matt Stowe. Stowe is referring to Westlee Yates, the man who is serving time for the death of the baby. Tiffany Hilliard, Yates’ former girlfriend, will now sit in the same place he sat one year ago, charged in the death of her 7-month-old baby boy. “We haven’t indicted her for murder,” Stowe said. “We don’t consider her a murderer, but that doesn’t mean she’s entirely blameless in what happened.” Court papers show a grand jury did indict Hilliard on two counts of aggravated child abuse and neglect stemming from the August 2014 beating death of her son. Last month, Yates took a plea deal in the murder case. He now is serving 48 years in prison. “We got him for that, but this man had been known to be violent for a long time,” Stowe said. “He had beaten many folks, including baby Jo Jo’s mother.” Court papers reveal one month before the murder, Yates was arrested at a home in Holladay for domestic assault. He admitted to head-butting Hilliard when she tried to leave, breaking her nose. “No more than you would put a baby in a polar bear’s cage should she have ever left or should any person have ever left a child alone with this man,” Stowe said. But when WBBJ 7 Eyewitness News sat down with Hilliard just after her child’s death in 2014, she defended Yates. “He has his other two kids. He seemed like he was a loving dad,” Tiffany Hilliard said. For Stowe, he said he hopes this case will show other mothers there is a way out. “We really hope that if anything positive can come out of this case, it will be that some woman somewhere will say, ‘I’m not going to leave my children in the hands of this dangerous man. I am going to get away,'” Stowe said. Hilliard is currently jailed in the Benton County Jail in lieu of a $50,000 bond. She is set to be arraigned on Friday. The sheriff’s office said Hilliard arrived back in Benton County Monday after being extradited from Illinois.
